Luigi Settembrini, though standing many rungs of the political ladder lower than Poerio, was nevertheless a hardy and enthusiastic patriot. Mr. Gladstone wrote of him in his letters to Lord Aberdeen (hereafter to be mentioned) as one _in a sphere by some degrees narrower, but with a character quite as pure and fair_ as Poerio’s. Settembrini was born at Naples, the 17th of April, 1813. His father was a lawyer, and, like his son, a patriot, and had fought for his country in the stirring days of 1820-1. Of Luigi’s private life we may say that he was a teacher of Italian literature and an eminent classical scholar. In 1848 he, together with Poerio, was tried on the trumped-up charge of being member of a secret society. This charge was further supported by a letter concocted by the police, so gross and palpable a forgery that the very judges in the case considered it more prudent to reject it as evidence. With Poerio and forty more he was capitally convicted. The sentence was not executed, yet he was reserved for a fate as hard—perpetual imprisonment _upon a remote sea-girt rock_. Although Settembrini was in the above case most unjustifiably, nay, iniquitously, convicted, and barbarously punished, it is well known that he was, as a matter of fact, an ardent supporter of the society called “Giovine Italia,” an association which, had the sagacity of its directors been more, and the audacity of its purposes less, might have given some trouble to the then rulers of Italy. When the King of Naples, as has been said, charged Pius IX. with being at the head of _Young Italy_, he probably made use of the most scurrilous phrase, by way of accusation, which occurred to him. The “Giovine Italia,” however, was an established fact, albeit the association numbered not the Pope amongst its members, nor was it under the special protection of the Church. Tyranny has this superiority over luckless poverty that it renders those on whom it presses dangerous as well as ridiculous. This peculiar form of danger, the Secret Society, which tyranny calls into existence, is commonly less formidable to the powers against which it is organised than to the causes which it is intended to protect. Had the modest programme of the “Giovine Italia” been carried into execution, a despotism would have been created more unbearable than the yoke of Austria, the Vatican, and King Bomba united. The prime object of this society was to abolish all Princes then reigning in Italy—including, of course, the Pope—and not only to drive the Austrians out of the country, but the French from Corsica and the English from Malta. When these laudable ends had been accomplished, a great Military Republic was to be established under a supreme Dictator, residing at Rome, with ten consuls to govern the ten divisions into which the whole of Italy was to be parcelled out. Each province or division was to be under a colonel, its Municipal Government being administered by a captain. To each division,